For Collectors
Collector Guides
In-depth guides for serious wine collectors — tax rules, estate planning, insurance coverage and claims, inherited collections, valuation methodology, and platform migration.
Tax and Estate
What collectors need to know about tax and inheritance
Fine wine is a collectible under the federal tax code, an alcohol product under state law, and a hard-to-value asset in every estate. These guides cover the rules, deadlines, and common mistakes.
Tax Guide
Fine Wine Tax Guide
Capital gains, the 28% collectibles rate, cost basis, and the recordkeeping the IRS expects — from acquisition through sale.
Estate Guide
Estate Planning Guide
$15M exemption under OBBBA, step-up in basis, trusts, executor duties, and how to make sure your collection actually reaches your heirs intact.
For Heirs
You Inherited a Wine Collection — Now What?
The 30-day playbook for heirs and executors: protect the asset, inventory everything, get a date-of-death valuation, and know why you probably can't just sell it yourself.
Insurance
Coverage that actually pays out
Standard homeowners policies almost never cover a serious cellar at its true value. And even the right policy fails without documentation. These three guides cover what to buy, what to prove, and what an adjuster looks for.
Insurance FAQ
Insurance Valuation FAQ
Agreed value vs. market value, appraisal requirements, high-net-worth carriers, per-peril coverage, and typical premium ranges for fine wine.
Coverage Guide
Does Homeowners Insurance Cover Your Wine Cellar?
The three gaps in standard homeowners coverage: shared caps, collectibles sub-limits, and named-perils exclusions that leave serious cellars exposed.
Claims Guide
Why Wine Insurance Claims Fail
The four failure modes adjusters see most: phantom inventory, valuation gap, storage question, and provenance problem — and the documentation that closes each one.
Valuation and Platform
Methodology and switching from other tools
How VaultSomm values a bottle — and how it compares to the cellar apps most collectors have used before.
Methodology
Valuation Methodology
How VaultSomm sources auction and retail data, weights sources, computes fair market value, and reports per-bottle confidence.
Migration
CellarTracker Migration
Step-by-step guide to exporting your CellarTracker inventory and importing it into VaultSomm without losing history.
Comparison
CellarTracker Alternative
How VaultSomm compares to CellarTracker on valuation depth, insurance reporting, and estate readiness.
Comparison
Vivino Alternative
Why serious collectors outgrow Vivino, and what a dedicated valuation and portfolio platform offers instead.
Start with your cellar's benchmark score
Before you dive into individual guides, get a snapshot of where your collection stands across documentation, valuation coverage, storage integrity, and more. Free, about three minutes.
Score My Cellar